Has Worry Gone Viral? By Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas, PhD
Has Worry Gone Viral?
By Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas, PhD
My friend Yvonne Oswald, PhD, says; “Worry is an echo of mind searching for completion that decides ‘does this apply? Or can I file it away?” Chronic worry without resolution brings ridiculous self-demands, disruptive inactivity or hyperactivity. Your thoughts, words, and actions have a vibration that influences your energy. Negativity lowers your frequency. Optimism raises it higher and boosts your immune response. Joy produces a mood-enhancing norepinephrine that attaches itself to receptors and blocks potentially harmful viruses. As Dr. Oswald notes; “Exhaustive worry about the pandemic could lower your immune response at the very time when you most need to strengthen it.” How does worry happen?
YOUR ENVIRONMENT
Mirror neurons in your brain cause you to take on energy and emotion from your environment. Did a worrywart raise you? If so, worry may have become a learned pastime. Are people around you now worrywarts? Are you catching worry from negative views or negative news?
PAST CONCERNS
Are you more engaged in the past and an unknown potential outcome than the present? If something is done and over, you can delete, reframe and tuck it away as a past memory and make bygones; bye and gone.
FUTURE FANTASY
Fear is a real reaction to a direct threat said to originate in the amygdala and disappear when the threat is over. In non-life-threatening situations, your prefrontal cortex is thought to inhibit the response. Chronic worry overrides this interaction. Future-based worry focuses on what “could” happen.
Mindful here and now attention overrides worrisome fantasy and helps you to imagine a future time when with a smile you say, “Thank heavens that’s over.”
BEYOND YOUR CONTROL
How can you control something beyond your control? You can’t. So just as you push the delete button on your computer, delete things you cannot control and embrace things you can control. This makes bygones “bye and gone” and allows you to enter mindfully into this moment of pro-active joy of being perfectly you and perfectly alive.
THEN DO THIS! Direct your mind to a peaceful place in your imagination and insturct your Higher Mind “Please delete things I cannot control and embrace the things I can control… Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Local Personality, Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas, PhD is a hypnotherapist, mindfulness and NLP trainer, artist and the author of 25 books. She certifies practitioners through the International Hypnosis Federation. You can call her at 310 541-4844.